Chapter 2 of LSES:

Theoretical Ideals and Ideologized Reality in Language Planning

Tan Su Hwi

This chapter is a problematical one, which I find not particularly contributory to much understanding of the Singapore situation, and will not review it in detail. Essentially it takes a neo-Marxist stance, and attacks Fishman's notion that languages of wider communication can be ideologically neutral or that it can be functionally non-competitive . It then proceeds to beat-up on Fishman, bringing in a whole array of post-modern, neo-Marxist pomobabble about the hegemony of this, the inequality of that, all of which Fishman was supposed to have been able to predict, but did not.

The fact that knowledge of English is not equally accessible to all means that some people do not have as high salaries, and therefore as much power as others in S. society. I wonder if continuation of Chinese education in S. would have had a different effect, or is not the elitism of Singapore's education system a product of an essentially Chinese outlook? In other words, is the English language to blame for the uses that people have put it to? Has the English language acted on its own, establishing its hegemony, disempowering the lower classes, running roughshod over the rights of people? Can we not see this as an unintended consequence of the "omniscient" know-it-all thinking of Singapore's language planners?

Ms. Tan rightly criticizes S's top-down planning, where omnipotent power elites plan language for other people without consulting them. (Is this any different in China?). But when she refers to language as a material form of ideology she loses me. What is material about language? Does it possess molecular structure? Atomic weight? Why is language not a social construct? a tool, which can be used in different ways?

No, instead we get

The negative strand of the dialectics motivates the English language to create a discourse that legitimizes the "institutionalization of inequality" (McCleary 1992:3). This negative, disempowering aspect of English, however, has not been allowed to surface overtly in society because the prevailing ideology, abiding by its pragmatic stance, is able to justify the hegemonic character of the language at each stage of its developmental history. (P. 54)
Note that the English language is motivated to create a discourse that disempowers, etc. Discourses disempower; languages act without input from their users, like Godzilla. And so on.

In fact the only useful thing Tan does is to reproduce the graphic that Pakir has proposed, the

Expanding triangles of English expression by English-knowing bilinguals in Singapore:

	Formal	        	SSE		 Advanced
				 /\
				/  \
	Careful 	       / 3  \		 Adept	
			      /	     \
			     /   /\   \
			    /   /  \   \
	Consultative	   /   / 2  \   \        Intermediate
			  /   /      \   \
			 /   /	 /\   \   \
			/   /   /  \   \   \
	Casual	       /   /   / 1  \   \   \    Basic
		      /   /   /      \   \   \
	Intimate     /___/___/__SCE___\___\___\  Rudimentary
		    	 		

(Source: Pakir 1991:144)

The left side of the triangles is the cline of formality while the right side is the cline of proficiency which meet at the top for really proficient users of Standard Singapore English (SSE). People at the bottom (SCE) can only operate within their own triangles. SSE people can lower their registers to talk informally with CSE speakers (taxi-drivers, hawkers, etc.) but the lower folks can't move up. Thus the higher users are linguistically empowered while the lower users are disempowered.


haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu,
last modified 3/24/99